The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (34 page)

"You want killing, Doc? That's not like you."

"No killing, just some nighttime recon and
photos."

"You said ambiguous. That usually means—"

"No. I said am-FIB-ious." Laitis's English
still isn't so hot.

"Tell me about it."

* * *

"That's not an old beat-up Dodge, Doc; that's a
goddamn van," said Jim DeGroot, peering at the parking lot
through his marine glasses.

It was dark aboard
Whimsea
;
we wanted to remain as low key as possible. We were sitting up in the
flying bridge, out under the stars in the dark. There were some low,
puffy clouds playing tag with a half-moon up there. Enough light for
ultra-speed film and no flash? Or would we have to go with the
infrared? Maybe just use the thousand-speed film and push the hell
out of it in the tank, I thought. My mind was racing. I looked at the
big white van in the marina parking lot again.

"Wonder where he got that?" I whispered.
"Probably stole it. Hey, there's somebody with him. Good Christ,
is he big."

The two silhouetted figures walked across the lot,
approaching the dock where
Whimsea
was tied up with a lot of other cruisers. We could only see their
outlines, but the stranger looked two heads taller than Roantis,
which put him over six six, with shoulders that weren't quite as wide
as a flight deck.

"Pssssst! Doc!"

"Over here," I said, in a voice just loud
enough so he could locate us. He spotted the
Whimsea
,
then saw us up on the bridge. He walked up the dock opposite our boat
and looked up.

"Help us with the Zode," he said.

"What?"

"We need help carrying the Zode. C'mon, both of
you."

As we walked across the deserted parking lot in the
dark, Roantis introduced the man with him as John Smith. We shook
hands, and a horny sheath of muscle and bone engulfed my hand. John
Smith nodded to us, but didn't say boo. He had blue eyes, a deep tan,
and white-blond hair. I noticed the eyes. They had that same flat
look as Laitis's eyes. The low-affect look. The pit bulldog stare.
John Smith my ass.

It was a little after one in the morning. We were at
a marina in Lewis Bay, which is right next to Hyannis, on the Cape's
southern shore. Our destination, Tuckernuck Island, was about
twenty-five miles due south, right across Nantucket Sound. A two-hour
run at moderate speed. I had Jim bring
Whimsea
down here on short notice, but I convinced him it was important. Even
so, he wasn't overly eager.

"I feel uneasy around this Roantis guy," he
whispered to me as we followed the two men to the van. I told him
that was understandable.

"Is it really true he once ate a chunk of
two-by-four to win a bar bet?"

"Oh yeah. He did that. But he cheated."

"Cheated?"

"Uh-huh; he covered it with whipped cream
first."

"Look, I don't have to do this you know—"

"Come on, we've got to unload this Zode,
whatever the hell it is.”

We heard the back doors of the van open softly as we
approached it. Then Roantis and Mr. John Smith hopped inside and
heaved a large, very heavy bundle halfway out the bed of the truck.
The four of us hauled it over to
Whimsea's
foredeck quick and quiet. Roantis instructed us to lash the bundle
down, which Jim and I did while they returned to the van for two
duffel bags and a large outboard motor, which Mr. Smith carried back
to the boat under one arm, as if it were a camera bag.

We started the engines and cast off, purring out of
the marina and into Lewis Bay. In short order, we were clear of land
and heading out over Nantucket Sound, with only the running lights
on. I doubt anyone saw us, which was just fine. The water was calm
and inky black, with big soft swells. We would get to Tuckernuck
about three A.M. Perfect.

Below us, in the forward stateroom, the light flicked
on. Roantis and John Smith were talking. The language was one I'd
never heard before. It wasn't Lithuanian, which was Roantis's native
tongue. This speech sounded like a cross between Swedish and
Japanese. Or maybe Apache.

"Pssst! Hey Doc," whispered Jim, his eyes
on the console. "You think that guy's name is really John Smith?
I say, if he's John Smith, I'm Pochahontas."

"Could be. There's a remote chance—"

"And I say he's a foreigner, too."

"Good going, Jim. You could be a candidate for
Mensa."

He told me to go fuck myself, put his big hands on
the twin throttle knobs, and shoved them forward. The engines revved,
and I felt
Whimsea's
hull rise up and plane. We were clipping along, the silver gray wake
spreading out behind us, faint in the moon glow. There was the cozy
hum of the engines, and the slight pitching of the deep V hull,
cutting through the black water of the Atlantic.

I heard the clank of metal, and knew that the guys
below were unpacking their toys. Then Roantis would slip into his
jetblack neophrene wet suit. The one with faint purple and gray
swirls on it. His "Black Widow" outfit. Mr. Smith was
probably donning his mask and cape . . .

"God, I'm nervous," Jim said, wiping his
palms of his pants and peering ahead into the darkness. "Cross
Rip Shoals dead ahead. Graveyard of the Atlantic. Then we've got to
sneak up there . . .

What if we're seen? What if they've got—

"Hey," I said, shrugging my shoulders and
lighting a small Brazilian cigar. "Don't think about it till it
happens."

"Well I hate this, Doc. I don't mind telling
you, I fucking hate it."

"C'mon, Jim; you like boating . . ."

Naturally, I felt the gut-wrenching rush of
adrenalin, too. But I don't suppose it would do any good to tell him
how I really felt. I loved it.
 

TWENTY-SEVEN

AFTER NINETY MINUTES of churning along, we cut speed
and crept up on Tuckernuck slow and easy, at one-third throttle, Jim
watching the echo sounder carefully. We had used dead reckoning for
most of the way, relying on compass heading and speed over time for a
rough fix. Now we used the RDF to catch the radio beacons at Brant
Point, Chatham, and Woods Hole to pinpoint our position. At
two-fifteen, the water shoaled fast: our depth reading going from
twenty-some feet to less than eight in under a minute. We knew then
we had reached Tuckernuck Bank, and Jim stopped
Whimsea
dead in the water, saying he wasn't going to risk a cracked hull or a
stranded vessel in these tricky waters.

"Sure t'ing, kid, that's why we brought the
Zode," said Roantis, going out onto the foredeck with John
Smith. I lowered the bow anchor, which seemed to bump the bottom
immediately, even though we were still two miles off the island. Jim
threw a hook off the stern as well, to keep the cruiser pointing
toward Tuckernuck. We doused the running lights, keeping only the
tiny anchor light going. Working by flashlight, Roantis undid the big
bundle and we all unfolded the heavy-gauge rubber with metallic
coating. I saw the word ZODIAC on the side. So that's what the
mysterious "Zode" was: a Zodiac rubber boat, just like
Jacques Cousteau's. John Smith attached an air tank to the valves of
the boat and inflated it in three winks, the rubber making a hollow,
pneumatic echo as the raft flumped and stretched into shape,
resulting in a hardness and rigidity that left me, well, envious. I
was wondering if I could hook that bottle up to my—

"C'mon Doc, let's get her launched," said
Roantis. And we put the Zode into the sea, with John Smith handing
down the huge Mercury motor as if it were a hiker's day pack. He
wasn't wearing the cape after all, but a black wet suit with matching
hood, a nylon pack on his broad back, and a black knife as big as a
machete strapped to his calf. I was wearing cutoffs, a sweat shirt, a
navy-blue wool sweater over the sweat shirt, and a woolen black watch
cap pulled down low over my head. I put on a pair of high-top
sneakers and laced them tight. I threw my waterproof camera bag into
the Zode. Roantis was crouched in the bow, holding an illuminated
compass. He wore his .45 in a shoulder rig made of nylon. Mr. John
Smith, in the stern, secured my camera bag between his feet. You
couldn't even see Roantis or his big friend in the dark. No kidding.

The friend, Mr. Smith, intrigued me. Except for a few
foreign phrases to Roantis, he hadn't spoken in two hours. Probably
shy.

The outboard motor had been altered with a special
blackened shroud and an exhaust pipe that extended down below the
surface. The purpose of these modifications was immediately apparent
when John Smith started it. It was slightly louder than a Mixmaster.
Circling
Whimsea
in
our silent craft, allowing the engine to warm up, we told Jim we'd
return within an hour.

"But if we're not back by five, raise the Coast
Guard on your radio," I said. "See ya, guy. Don't take any
wooden nickels . . ."

And we were off, bouncing over the swells in the dark
with the big motor purring at our backs. In the bow, Roantis kept his
eyes riveted to the compass, indicating course changes to John Smith
by waving his arm. The warm sea breeze blew over us as we crouched
low in the boat. I suppose our speed was about ten or twelve miles an
hour. Not fast, but we didn't have far to go. just to be on the safe
side, I'd brought my Browning Hi Power, which I now took out of the
waterproof camera bag and shoved into the nylon Bianchi shoulder rig
Roantis had loaned me. The automatic rode right under my left armpit,
thirteen hollow-point rounds in the magazine and one up the spout.
God, I hoped we wouldn't have to use any of the hardware.

In a little while I heard surf. The muffled motor was
a double boon: it enabled us not only to travel in silence, but to
hear as well. We crept up to the beach, which was a faint pale line
stretched out before us. Then we were riding the surf with the engine
off . . . we skidded into the sandy shallows with the motor tipped
up. jumping out, we towed the boat through the calf-deep water. The
water was warm on my legs. We slogged up to the wet sand at the
water's edge, then dragged the Zode across the beach to where the
trees and scrub began. We stood there for a second on the sand in the
dark, listening to the gentle surf, looking up and down the beach for
a landmark. I felt the delicious thrill of being somewhere I
shouldn't be.

Roantis snapped the compass shut and put it away,
saying that according to his calculations, we'd landed a half-mile
west of Hunter Whitesides's mansion. So we followed him, walking
single file, thirty feet apart, up the beach.

The problem was that Tucknernuck Island was so
sparsely settled it was practically deserted. Consequently, landmarks
were nonexistent; all we had to guide us was water, sand, and trees.
But Roantis left the beach after a few minutes and started cutting
diagonally up the sloping sand, headed for the woods. Sure enough,
after struggling through thick brush, trying to be as silent as
possible, we saw the faint dark outline of a big, big house.

Roantis's sense of direction and skill at tracking
defies belief. But then, he's had a lot of practice sneaking around
in the dark. Roantis scanned the place with his night glasses and
pointed. I followed his arm and saw the steel tower forty yards away.
It was much bigger than it had seemed in the photos—at least sixty
feet high. We began to creep toward it but were stopped by a barbed
wire fence. Barbed wire? On Tuckernuck Island? Surely this, if
anything, was a dead giveaway that Whitesides and company were up to
something shady. Roantis handed me the glasses. John Smith also took
out a pair from his rucksack. The big house was dark. The large
clearing between the house and the woods where we crouched would be a
lawn. I saw a group of Adirondack chairs and a wooden table. Then I
looked at the steel latticework of the tower again. I recalled the
things that geologist Calvin Beard had told me to look for, things
that were a dead giveaway for a drilling rig: crown block. Traveling
block. The turntable and the "kelly." Drilling motors . . .

Great, Calvin. But from where we sat, I couldn't see
shit. For one thing, the base of the tower was hidden by a small rise
on the other side of the fence.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. Roantis whispered close.

"The fence means dey're up to something. To cut
it is a trespass. just t'inking about it from the legal aspect, you
know . . . for later on . . ."

I nodded and thought. Maybe we could get some
long-range pix of the tower. Would that be good enough?

No it wouldn't. That's why we had come all this way
in the dead of night: to get close. Again, I heard Calvin Beard
briefing me on the wharf at Woods Hole. Look for pipe lying around.
Look for the mud hose. Above all, look for the mud, he'd told me.
They can't hide the damn mud. The drilling mud, the slurry that's
pumped down the pipe as it rotates, is what cools the bit, keeps
pressure on the well head, and drives the broken rock back up the
hole.